


Distortion is Marketable

by jesterlady



Category: Lost
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, F/M, One Shot, Resolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-17 23:41:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/873249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesterlady/pseuds/jesterlady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the bomb is dropped, Sawyer explains his little look faux paux.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distortion is Marketable

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own Lost. The title is by Eugene Peterson

When the world didn’t end, she found herself naked in the jungle. After she was done being disoriented, she heard shouting and followed the noise. After she was finished being embarrassed at the sight of all her people (and wasn’t it odd that she considered them all her people?) seeing her naked, she remembered that she shouldn’t remember them. After she processed the fact that they weren’t at LAX, Sawyer gave her his jumpsuit. After that, he gripped her so tightly she couldn’t breathe and she could hear Hurley talking somewhere behind her and Jack urging them on. After that, Sayid stumbled out of the bushes and Jack went into doctor mode while Juliet saw Kate turning away to give her and Sawyer privacy and she was oddly thankful even if she was trying to remember why she shouldn’t be kissing Sawyer this much.

After they walked for hours, Sawyer supporting her and Jack supporting Sayid, they found the beach. After they’d rested for a few hours and miraculously didn’t argue about their next move because Jack was too busy doctoring and Sawyer didn’t focus on anybody but her, they were joined by the Others. She spotted Richard and wondered at how these were her people and weren’t anymore and would be again. Or something like that. What year was she in?

After they found out they were in the present (or was it their past?) and Sun and Jin reunited in the biggest, most romantic display the island had presented yet there was an argument about whether Locke was really dead. All she was really concerned about was whether Ben spotted her with Sawyer’s arm around her waist.

After that she remembered, and recoiled from his side and ran into the jungle.

***

Sawyer cursed as Juliet ran off, half-cocked, tripping over his jumpsuit that was much too big for her. 

“Idiot woman,” he muttered as he ran after her. “Juliet! Juliet, stop!”

“I can’t, James. I set off the bomb, why are we here? Why am I here? And now I still have to lose you,” she said frantically.

“Calm your jets, Ricky Racette. None of us are where we thought we’d be when Dr. Brilliant dropped the bomb. You set it off?” She nodded, but slowly as if still not sure why she wasn’t lying at the bottom of a shaft and covered in her own blood. “Then I guess I have you to thank for my current state of happiness.”

“Happiness?”

“You’re alive!” he said, wondering why he had to say it at all.

“But…you looked at her,” she said in a small voice. 

Juliet did not look like the woman who’d tasered him the first time they’d met, if you could call that meeting. She looked like the woman she’d described to him who’d been brutalized by her ex husband and plagued by insecurity and fear.

“Don’t forget what’s really happened to us, Juliet. Don’t go Momento on me. We’re together and that’s not gonna change.”

“I’m not forgetting, James!” she snapped, sounding more like herself. “I know you would rather have a forever with someone else. I’m a consolation prize and now it doesn’t have to be that way.”

“That’s the biggest load of bull I ever heard that didn’t come from the Short Bunny Killer over there,” he snapped right back.

“Who would you look at if you were thinking of the one that you wanted to be with forever? Oh yeah, it was Kate.”

“Don’t you think that maybe now is not the time to be airing domestic grievances when we’re on the Island of Mystic Forces that Screw Up Our Lives?” he asked.

“When else are we going to do it, James? We could get caught in another time flash, we could get killed by a smoke monster, we could fall in the creek and drown.”

The expression on her face made him laugh. He couldn’t help himself. He laughed so long that eventually she cracked a smile.

“The creek? Really? Couldn’t we drown in the ocean?” he gasped.

“If it would make you feel better,” she said, smile fading.

“What would make me feel better is if you stop this nonsense about me leaving you. You were the one who left me when you let go!” he said, feeling again the pain of the moment.

“I had to. You would’ve been killed,” she said.

“Maybe I wanted to be if I couldn’t live without you,” he said.

She looked happy and then confused.

“But you would have had everything you wanted.”

“I want you,” he said firmly.

“Could you just admit that you looked at her? That it meant something? That you at least thought about leaving me?” she pleaded.

Sawyer hung his head and sighed. 

“Let’s sit down, Sunshine.” He plopped himself on a log and patted the seat next to him. She gingerly sat down. “You wanna hear why I looked at her?”

“What reason could there possibly be?” she asked.

“A good one. So listen and stop regressing to your pre-Island self.” She raised an eyebrow, but quieted. “Kate was the first woman I ever loved. Or loved enough. You know all about Cassidy so I won’t go into that. Despite all the crap Kate gave me and the time she spent running from me to the Doc and back again, she gave me hope that I could be a better man, not Sawyer, but someone else. Then she was gone and there was you, a woman who had my back at every turn, someone who, despite the way we started out, I trusted with my life. That’s a novelty, Blondie. I loved you more than I ever thought possible, ever believed I could. I changed and you changed and we healed from the past. But that doesn’t mean there ain’t scar tissue waiting to flare up at the slightest sign. 

When she came back it was like I was reliving my past and it hurt, but it reminded me of that hope and, more importantly, it reminded me of how much I wanted you and our house and life. Don’t mean I have to give up my personality or my freedom - which is what I used to think. You changed all that, let me see what it was like to be a bad ass, good man.” She smiled at that. “When I looked at her, that stupid look, I was thinking about how much I’d changed and how I thought I’d want to be with her forever, but it wasn’t ever gonna be. I was putting her to death, Juliet. And now you’re alive.” He reached to her and put his hand on her cheek. “I love you. Don’t make me lose you. I won’t do anything to make you think I’d leave you.”

“That was the longest speech you’ve ever made in your life, huh?” she said softly, leaning slightly into his hand.

“You bet your pretty, white ass it was. I’m out of breath.”

“Then let me help,” she said and leaned over to press her lips against his. 

Several minutes later he truly was out of breath.

“That didn’t help!” he protested.

“Oh, yes, it did,” she said, smiling, and how he loved her smile when it wasn’t a goodbye or bravery. 

Simple, pure, dangerous, and something innately her.

“You might be right at that. I’ve got something new to call you, but that’s gonna have to wait for a more appropriate time,” he said.

“Intriguing. And…thank you,” said Juliet.

“Anytime, honey. The domesticated outlaw, that’s me.”

***

After they rejoined the others, it appeared as if the Dead Locke side had won. They were camping on the beach and an alliance had been reached with the Others. Richard and Jack were shaking hands, Jin and Sun were clutching at each other as if their lives depended on it, and Sawyer and Juliet were eager to simulate the same behavior.

After the world didn’t end, life went back to normal. As normal a life as these lost people had ever known.


End file.
